Abstract

In a socially enlightened age of compensation and disability insurance, the relation of trauma to disease requires careful analysis. Only too often the prospect of reimbursement induces the patient, subconsciously at least, to relate his symptoms to some incident of ubiquitous trauma. Unfortunately and also too often, the sympathetic physician uncritically accepts the cause-and-effect relationship suggested by the patient and may even report the case in the medical literature affirming this impression. In the field of cancer such uncritical acceptance of the influence of trauma has resulted in mistaken concepts, which are only recently being broken down by the vigorous